


a lupus aut draconis

by CampionSayn



Series: September Morning Bells [9]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Multi, Power Swap, The Horror ADORES Klaus, period typical BS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:08:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: Let's suppose, that when Klaus and Ben dropped off together in the '60s, there was a bit more than a hiccup.Let's suppose Ben returned to flesh and blood, but could see Klaus standing before him and didn't feel the Horror writhing in his belly. Let's suppose Klaus is totally okay with this, thinks of it as paying Ben back for all the shit he had to put up with over almost two decades.Some swindles are made, of course.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves/Jill, Raymond Chestnut/Allison Hargreeves
Series: September Morning Bells [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906099
Comments: 6
Kudos: 97





	a lupus aut draconis

It took Klaus less time to figure out how to change his appearance in ghostly form than it took Ben, and he couldn't help but feel more grateful than jealous. His brother really didn't look good in those mix-and-match army fatigues, and the whole long hair, gothic cowboy look seemed to make other ghosts think twice about getting too close to Ben when he was trying to sleep.  
  
A power move if there ever was one.  
  
  
  
When the portal through time and space kicked them into the Dallas of 1960, Ben landed on his ass and bit into his lip.  
  
The taste of blood had him looking to find Klaus, lying on the ground, dazed and confused, but somehow lighter?  
  
Then Ben noticed the air in his lungs, and the dizziness, and the lack of slimy tentacles writhing in his abdomen.  
  
  
He looked over and found Klaus with his head lifted, one of the tentacles Ben had been thinking of slipped out from under his (terrible) shirt, almost perched on his chest like a kitten or a squirrel, or something adorable that nobody else would probably think of when it came to the Horror.  
  
  
Klaus didn't freak out. He did not jump from the ground and try smacking the thing away, or start shaking with fear.  
  
He simply lifted his ' _HELLO_ ' hand and dusted the tip of the appendage with cooing words of greeting and adoration slipping from him without thought and attracting all the rest of the tentacles out into the open for the same treatment they never had before; a smile stretching his face when he finally looked over to Ben, and winked.  
  
  
 _("Total. Power. Move.")_  
  
 ** _("Bare minimum flexing.")_**  
  
  
Ben could happily say that there were no proper words in language to define the feeling of life returning to his veins at the cost of his brother's power and life; Klaus taking up where Ben had been beside him for nearly two decades.  
  
'Conflicted' was _not_ enough. Three syllables, derived from Latin words in five parts, which would please Klaus if he ever said it out loud, "Dead language? Sign me up!" But that's the only word that kept flashing through his head in the actual fucking years to come in the timeline they were stuck in until Five returned.  
  
 _(Five, who was not dead, Klaus promised and Ben believed, because there was more in Klaus than just seeing grisly after images of what had once been alive. No explanation either could give, but no lie in that there was always MORE in Klaus that their father never saw.)_  
  
  
Ben did not starve, he did not freeze, he did not suffer like he had under the thumb of his father even with the oppression and segregation all around in the state of fucking Texas.  
  
  
Klaus did not flee, he did not dally and become distracted as the new carrier of something ancient and powerful existing inside of him, he did not abandon his brother to learn the ins and outs of spectral observance and interaction--because he was an asshole, but not a douchebag.  
  
  
They thrived.  
  
  
Klaus took his role as lookout to heart as a ghost, and Ben took his place on the mortal coil for the second chance that it was.  
  
Where Ben had been a 6/10 _(haha--laugh it up)_ as a ghost bound to Klaus at his calling, Klaus was easily a 10/10 and then some, because he chose to stay and he had something to put his _(forced? unconventional?)_ sober efforts into.  
  
Keeping Ben safe, happy, and healthy was most of what he'd wanted for years, and this was as good a chance as any.  
  
Being a pick-pocket was easier now, even the first time he vanished for an hour and brought two hundred dollars back to his brother that still had scruples even after years of being tied to him in all his debauchery and misery.  
  
  
"Klaus, you can't rob people, just because we need the money," he'd grumbled, groused, and groaned, even while counting the money, dividing it four ways and then slipping each stack folded into all four of his jean pockets. He'd been staked out in front of a church that gave coffee and bread to the homeless first thing in the morning ever Tuesday and Friday, contemplating the likelihood of nuns running him off for being Asian like the bar he'd tried to card-shark in had done their first night.  
  
Klaus grinned with all of his teeth and waggled a finger, "That's a naughty word, Benny, I would never rob for you. I merely borrowed from people who could afford it."  
  
"Okay, Robin Hood, where'd you get it from?"  
  
They stayed that night in a hotel, Klaus regaling Ben with locations of dirty cops with their stolen coin, drug dealers that would put some of his old boyfriends to shame, politicians that rented out girls while soaking drunk, and racist restaurant owners that blinked a little too long with their registers open.  
  
Try as he might to disagree, Ben could appreciate that kind of borrowing.  
  
  
Ben wanted to relish his time back and decided the best way to do that was to get a form of transport.   
  
Neither of them brought up that Ben didn't have a license and that he'd be rusty at the whole driving thing, but Klaus still scouted the city until he found a reasonably used bike and car shop owned by a WWII veteran that wasn't an asshole and would give Ben a good price.  
  
  
Both of them made the same kind of grabby hands when they came upon a _Honda Dream_ motorbike that was a _'58_ used, but had been made up like new and would do them well for the time being that they had to wait and work and live.  
  
Ben also got a job out of his appreciation, not with the vet himself, but with his nephew by the name of Keechie who worked in a second location further out of town where they worked on larger automobiles like army vans and the like.  
  
Klaus liked the guy; they were both flighty and impulsive, but Keechie was also what Ben would call a proto-hippie that reminded him of the early "Wandering Birds" of late 1890s Germany, "Please tell me when he walks in the room. I might like his music, but he's a little too touchy-feely for me."  
  
  
After an actual year had passed, Klaus couldn't take it anymore. This, with Ben doing his work and renting a room in a flophouse near the _Arboretum and Botanical Garden_ , letting Klaus help him cheat at pool or cards with the occasional addition of performing what appeared to be hand magic for small children, disappearing or levitating or changing objects but was really just Klaus doing his duty to be a little _not_ scary for a time; repeating the process over and over, while also keeping an eye open for their siblings.  
  
Ben deserved a life more interesting and wonderful than that.  
  
So Klaus got him a girlfriend and enrolled him in Bishop College.  
  
Kinda. Sorta.  
  
Okay, he convinced Ben to go scout the college after Ben had practically eaten the knowledge of every good book he could find in the libraries in Dallas, caught Ben glancing at a young woman in the fiction section of the college library; probably, he wanted to warn her not to bother with _Stranger in a Strange Land_ , since the author was a good writer, but also kind of a homophobic misogynist.  
  
Klaus merely moved the book out of her reach and played what amounted to musical chairs with some of the other ones near her actually worth reading. Or worth snubbing.  
  
 _Catcher in the Rye_ , **out** ; _Lord of the Flies_ , **out** ; _Lolita_ , **in** ; _The Crucible_ , **in, in, _in_** ; _The Haunting of Hill House_ , **out** ; until he literally dropped _The Lord of the Rings_ and the _Les Miserables_ brick edition at her feet.  
  
She freaked out and reared back so quickly it was a wonder both she and Ben didn't bowl over into the stacks and cause a domino effect when she ran into him.  
  
But his arms were gentle and his stance was steady and his calling out, "Klaus!" like scolding a child didn't go unnoticed by the girl, Jill.  
  
She thought he was playing a prank on her, huffed and marched off, burning Ben with a glare that had the younger brother flinching and Klaus very interested.  
  
He didn't even let Ben's lecturing all through his shift at Keechie's bother him that much, given he was right in guessing that the girl would be back the next day.  
  
One does not simply experience an unexplained event and walk away from it.   
  
Adventure was out there, and all that.  
  
  
  
A year later, Ben could manifest him and Klaus found them sharing quite the friends in both Jill and Keechie, and Klaus could appear and disappear in a fashion that would put Five to shame.  
  
Jill had noted, and Keechie had reinforced, that this could be useful, the further into their shared powers they got and the more control they exhibited.  
  
"You could do a real magic act, you know," Jill had noted absently, the morning after she and Ben shared a bed for what must have been the fiftieth time _(not that Klaus was counting, exactly, he just made sure to always be sure the condoms at the bedside table were constantly in supply and unexpired; he could be responsible when he felt like it)_ and Klaus was making them good coffee and waffles without being seen in the kitchen, "I've seen you guys work the bars and the park. You could be good at it."  
  
Ben just blushed and smiled at anyone thinking he could do anything. Still getting used to positive reinforcement from someone who wasn't Klaus.  
  
  
  
Klaus had been allowing the Horror to wiggle out and stay out in the open for days on end, like particularly curious octopus babies in a Ghibli flick, because he didn't like making them feel trapped, and unless Ben gave him enough juice they couldn't really do anything but be present in the moment, anyway.  
  
Ben himself had been drifting further down the rabbit hole of the powers he was beginning to have the sketchy, niggling suspicion Klaus knew more about than he was letting on. The disappearing, the reappearing, solidifying ghosts, knowing exactly where Klaus was and where he was going--as well as any other ghost if he really put his senses and mind to work on it; which he preferred not to, since he was still working on just keeping them away from him when Klaus was occupied with something else and couldn't be what they both considered Ben's personal guardian wolf-dog of specters.  
  
He'd even managed to feel out where the soul resided in the human body, much to Klaus's annoying laughter and disbelieving exclamations of, "You're just noticing _now_ , Benny? It's not about _having_ a soul, it's about _being_ a soul. Every living thing _is_ one--it's the form and body that's the decoration, babe."  
  
"Even trees?" Ben hummed, wandering along a sidewalk downtown near one of the few districts owned by not white people that at least allowed him to _pretend_ Dallas wasn't a toxic sinkhole for a little while.  
  
He had a craving for some authentic Mexican or Italian and was thinking of flipping a coin on where he'd pick some up, _Campisi's_ or _El Fenix_ , but wanted to pop in to where Jill was getting her hair done so she could weigh in--he liked treating her when he had the time and money.  
  
"Especially trees," Klaus grinned, walking easily beside him, black coat flowy even without a breeze to give it a little swing, hair done up in a bun for the day; if he could look in a shop window or mirror and see himself without asking Ben for a little extra 'zing' he bet he looked amazing, "The young ones are harder to spot, but you find a two hundred year old one and it's like a lighthouse."  
  
"So that forester guy back in 2017 wasn't full of shit about them being sentient?"   
  
"Nah," he hummed back, opening the door for Ben without thought; the bell over their heads inside the salon jingling merrily.  
  
  
Elvis was playing over all the heads that turned to look at Ben, half suspicious and half with benign curiosity at the young man that walked in with a wardrobe that completely polarized him against the interior of the salon. Ben did that a lot, contrasted the surroundings in all its pastel summer colors year round against his oil-new moon-dragon-raven leather and denim and cotton.  
  
He'd gotten used to it about as well as he got used to people giving him dirty looks when he was talking to his brother without manifesting him or picking pockets as easy as breathing.  
  
Ben blinked once to adjust to the (way too bright, way too warm, everything with Klaus's powers was amplified except his body temperature, goddamn) lighting and found himself looking at a guy who looked like he was in charge. Whether or not he worked in or owned the place didn't really matter, since it was obvious from his stance and expression of expectancy that if Ben asked a question, he'd answer.   
  
"Is a Miss Jill here?"  
  
The man opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted rather swiftly by some scissors and a glass jar of some white material hitting the floor just out of peripheral vision to the both of them.  
  
Klaus caught his eye and made a peace sign before Ben almost got knocked over with the force of a bone crushing hug he found himself in, returning it full force once the noise blasting at his chest level became clear words--a repetition of his name, sobbed and smiled through when Allison pulled back a little to look him in the eyes.  
  
  
(The Horror wiggled out of Klaus with ease and care at the sounds of Ben being happy, greeting his sister properly since the first time in such a long time, arms tight around each other while laughing through tears.  
  
Klaus remained still, off to the side against a counter to enjoy the fruition of a week's worth of plotting; he wouldn't interrupt or make himself known in moments like this--with more to come if he could weigh in properly and get Allison and her husband to tag along with Ben and Jill to the restaurant Luther's mob boss liked to get his Italian takeout. Maybe even add in a little stroll towards their Entry-Exit point to pop into the shop that little conspiracy theorist had pictures of all his siblings tacked up on his walls; play a little hide and seek with Diego and Vanya.  
  
He didn't mind letting Ben and Allison have their moment--Ben deserved it, and more--but the Horror wasn't fooled into thinking Klaus didn't envy a little.  
  
It took its opportunity in Klaus being still as a statue as Jill got up from her seat to introduce herself to Ray and Allison properly; sleek appendages curling and curving around him with little squeezes, their tips finding his fingers and wrapping around them.)


End file.
